How Did Marijuana ‘Mega-Farms’ End Up In Canada?

(Photo credit: The Peace Naturals Project)

Canadian health regulators have created a new industry that allows what The National Post describes as marijuana ‘mega-farms.’

Come April 1st, these operations are supposed to supply medical marijuana for some 40,000 patients. And these patients are not your average smokers. Last year, they were licensed to consume a total of 190,000 kg of medical marijuana.

But the focus for most of these companies is likely the long-term. According to Health Canada, the number of Canadians using medical marijuana will rise to somewhere between 300,000 to 400,000 by 2024.

When Did It Begin?

In June 2013, Health Canada announced a new medical marijuana program called the Marihuana for Medical Purposes Regulations (MMPR). The MMPR outlined a massive overhaul to the previous medical marijuana program, known as the MMAR.

Complaints about the old program came from multiple sources.

For patients, it was difficult to sign up for medical marijuana. The MMAR required extensive paperwork that doctors had to fill out, which then had to be reviewed by Health Canada for final approval.

Then-Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq announced the MMPR on June 10 (Photo credit: Health Canada)

The MMPR introduces a much simpler prescription-based system, more like the systems of certain states in the U.S.

For law enforcement, the MMAR also created problems by allowing patients to grow in their own homes. Some license holders would use it as a cover-up to grow marijuana for the black market. While others didn’t, privacy laws made it difficult for law enforcement to monitor crime.

The MMPR bans home-grows, forcing patients to register with a commercial producer and purchase their medicine online.

Who Owns the Mega-Farms?

The MMPR allows any commercial entity to apply for a license to produce marijuana. Regulations are strict, which makes the cost of starting a MMPR business high. Thus, those who can afford to meet the regulations also can afford to operate large-scale grows.

Since June, the total number of MMPR applicants has exceeded 400. But the vetting process has been slow. As of now, Health Canada says it has approved 8 companies under the MMPR. But only 4 are listed on the government’s official website. According to Health Canada, the other 4 are not ready to register patients yet.

Tweed CEO Chuck Rifici standing in the empty Hershey’s factory (Photo credit: The Canadian Press/Adrian Wyld)

Hopeful applicants include a company called Tweed, which has purchased an abandoned Hershey’s Chocolate factory in Smith Falls, Ontario with 470,000 square ft. of space. Privateer Holdings, a U.S. private equity firm focused on marijuana, has also purchased a 35,000 square ft. facility in Nanaimo, B.C. through its new Canadian subsidiary Lafitte Ventures.

One company already approved is Prairie Plant Systems, which was the only supplier contracted by Health Canada to supply patients under the MMAR. The company revealed last October that it undertook a $24 million retrofit of its production facility, allowing it to grow 5 times more than before.

Tjalling Erkelens, CEO of Dutch medical marijuana company Bedrocan BV (Photo credit: Bedrocan BV)

Another approved producer, Bedrocan Canada, will initially import product from its Dutch sister company Bedrocan BV, which has supplied European pharmacies with medical marijuana for years. The company plans on beginning production in Canada by late 2014.

What Will Happen on April 1?

Licenses for personal cultivation will expire. Patients will be expected to get their marijuana from a commercial producer.

But there are problems. For one, patients have launched a Constitutional Challenge to prevent the MMPR’s ban on home-grows, which many say would make medical marijuana unaffordable. If they win, they could stop the ban from happening. If they don’t, some say it’ll take more than a policy change to stop them from growing.

Canadians rally on Parliament Hill for 4/20 (Photo credit: Patrick Doyle/Reuters)

Another issue is a shortage of supply. Growing enough cannabis for 40,000 patients isn’t easy.

According to Privateer Holdings CEO Brendan Kennedy, Health Canada expressed concern about a shortage as early as last June. But today, the department says it’s “confident that there will be adequate production levels” for the new program.

However, with only 4 to 8 companies ready to meet the April 1 deadline, it’s unclear whether the MMPR will be sufficiently supplied at the start. And at this point, even if companies like Tweed or Lafitte Ventures are approved before April 1, it seems unlikely they can have product ready by then.

Source Leaf Science

Why Bedrocan Is Selling Cannabis In Canada: Q&A With CEO Marc Wayne

Bedrocan's product sold in Europe (Photo: Sensi Seeds)

Last week, Bedrocan Canada was granted a license to sell medical cannabis under the country’s new program.

Bedrocan Canada was formed by Bedrocan BV, the sole supplier of medical marijuana in Holland and other European countries. It is also now one of 8 companies to be approved by Health Canada under the new program.

The program, called the MMPR, introduces a commercial industry for medical marijuana. Beginning April 1, some 40,000 Canadians will be required to purchase their medicine from companies like Bedrocan, instead of growing it themselves.

Despite Bedrocan’s operations in Europe, the company says it has much to look forward to in Canada. We spoke to CEO of Bedrocan Canada Marc Wayne about the company’s history and what’s in store for Canadians.

Q: How did Bedrocan get started?

Bedrocan started as a family business and it’s still run by two brother-in-laws in Holland. They’ve been in the agricultural business in the north of Holland for 30 years. They got into the production of cannabis seeds when cannabis seeds were legal in the 90s in Holland.

They moved into cannabis production when the government was looking for producers of medical marijuana for the Dutch program. Two companies were selected, but one company fell off, and Bedrocan became the sole provider.

Q: What does Bedrocan do today in Europe?

Bedrocan services all the patients in the medical cannabis program in Holland, which is around 3,000. The Dutch program distributes through pharmacies, so all of Bedrocan product is distributed through the pharmacy system.

It’s also covered by the largest health insurer in Holland, but that’s just been for the past couple years. Those are the type of initiatives we’re going to try and work on in Canada, because there’s precedent over there.

Tjalling Erkelens, CEO of Bedrocan Canada’s parent company Bedrocan BV (Photo: Bedrocan)

Q: So Canadians can hope for insurance coverage?

One of the initiatives we want to take on is how to get insurance coverage in Canada similar to Holland, to enable cost coverage for patients as much as possible.

Bedrocan product is pharmaceutical grade and standardized from batch to batch. We’re hoping that type of quality will help in the argument to the insurance companies, so they know the product they’re covering isn’t different every time.

We believe standardization and quality are, obviously, top priority.

Q: How does Canada’s MMPR program compare to Europe?

The European market for Bedrocan is strongly influenced by government and government regulations.

The MMPR is the next step, in our opinion, in the development of cannabis becoming a more common medicine in Canada, produced and distributed by professional companies.

The MMPR also allows for more competition compared to Europe. The European production is organized usually through contractual agreements between government and producers, which limits the development of a good market model for medicinal cannabis to mature.

Bedrocan BV’s growing facility (Photo: Bedrocan)

But the MMPR puts physicians in a role to give patients access to cannabis like in Europe. That’s a similarity.

Overall, medical cannabis is becoming more of a private industry in Canada, which should hopefully help with pricing in the long run. There’s more competition, so perhaps pricing will come down over time for the patients.

Q: Will the MMPR help cannabis become more accepted in Canada?

You can already see, since the regulations came out, how much more mainstream it’s become in Canada as a topic.

As more companies get involved, and more visibility gets involved, and more people accept medicinal cannabis as an option, it should help provide better access for everybody.

Source Leaf Science

Tweed Inc. Joins List Of Canadian Medical Marijuana Providers

(Photo: John Kealey/Businessweek)

Tweed Inc., a company out of Ottawa, announced Tuesday that it has been authorized to grow medical marijuana under Canada’s new program.

Tweed is now the fifth producer to be licensed under the MMPR and have their name listed on Health Canada’s website. Others include Mettrum, CanniMed, The Peace Naturals Project, and Bedrocan Canada.

“We are ecstatic to have a production license in-hand,” said Tweed President and CEO Chuck Rifici on Tuesday. “Tweed is now one monumental step closer to providing Canadians in need with premium, affordable marijuana.”

Rifici told the Ottawa Citizen that the company plans to offer 25 different strains of cannabis when the new program takes over on April 1.

By then, patients will be forced to abandon their previous grow set-ups and buy their medicine from commercial suppliers instead.

Tweed says customers will be able to make purchases online or over the phone. Prices will range from $5 to $12 per gram, with a 20% discount offered to low-income patients.

The company plans to begin registering patients by early February. Tweed already has 10,000 plants growing in its 470,000 square-foot facility, a former Hershey’s Chocolate factory in Smith Falls, Ontario.

The company currently has 20 employees and has plans to expand quickly, including a possible public offering.

Since June, Health Canada says it has received over 400 applications from businesses interested in the MMPR. However, with only 5 companies approved, some fear a shortage of supply come April.

Last year, doctors prescribed a total of 190,000 kilograms of cannabis to Canada’s 38,000 marijuana patients. Under the new program, the number of patients is expected to reach up to 400,000 by 2024.

Despite the concern, Health Minister Rona Ambrose told CBC News she believes “there will be sufficient supply, but again it will done in a way that is regulated and inspected by Health Canada officials.”

Source Leaf Science

Canada Rolls Out a ‘$1 Billion’ MMJ Industry

Marijuana was Canada’s newest mail-order product Tuesday, the inaugural day of a controlled medical marijuana industry that is expected to grow to more than $1 billion dollars within 10 years. But even as the new system privatizes distribution, critics fear regulation under the conservative-led government will make it harder for patients to get access to the drug.

In Canada, medical marijuana has been legal but highly regulated for more than a decade. Patients with doctor approval could grow or have someone else grow small quantities or request limited amounts from Health Canada, the national healthcare department.

But the conservative-led government voted earlier this year to effectively scrap that system in favor of a private—but also strictly regulated—system, targeting the flow of legal marijuana into the black market and shedding Health Canada’s role in marijuana production. Health Canada will phase out the current system, under which it sells registered users marijuana grown by Prairie Plant Systems, by the end of March.

Instead, starting Tuesday, medical marijuana users, or aspiring users, can send in an application directly to sanctioned corporate producers, along with a doctor’s note (or in some cases, a nurse’s note). If approved, they can place an order, pay the market price (the black market price is about $10 a gram; officials say the medical marijuana price will drop below that within a year), and wait for the secure courier to deliver their weed.

There are nearly 40,000 people registered to use the drug under the current system in a country with a tenth the population of the U.S., and the government expects that number to balloon—up to 450,000 by 2024—and fuel what could become a $1.3 billion domestic pot industry. But the government expects that the privatized system, with only heavily-vetted producers (so far there are two licensed distributors, of at least 156 applications), will help ensure a higher level of oversight.

“We’re fairly confident that we’ll have a healthy commercial industry in time,” Sophie Galarneau, a senior official with Health Canada, told the Canadian Press. “It’s a whole other ball game.”

The new regulations have failed to win over advocates for legalized marijuana, who have faced strong resistance from the conservative government led by Prime Minister Stephen Harper. In November, even as two states in the United States voted to legalize recreational marijuana, the Harper government passed strict minimum penalties for people who grow as few as six marijuana plants.

“They treat pot like it’s plutonium,” says Blair Longley, head of the single-issue Marijuana Party that fielded five candidates in the 2011 parliamentary elections. Speaking to TIME, Longley says he’s concerned the market-based system, which nixes the right to cheaply grow marijuana at home, will make marijuana less affordable for patients.

“We always knew that marijuana would get legalized in the worst possible way. It’s not a surprise that that’s what’s happening,” Longley says.

Undeterred, potential growers are lining up to be licensed in the new system, including the conditional owners of a former Hershey’s chocolate factory.

“The opportunity in the industry is significant,” Eric Nash, a licensed grower in the past who’s planning to enter the new market, told the Canadian Press. “We’ll see a lot of moving and shaking.

Source Cannabis News

Pharmaceutical Companies Look To Uruguay For Legal Cannabis

(Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Uruguay’s new marijuana laws have caught the attention of foreign drug companies hoping to import product for medical purposes.

Businesses and laboratories from Canada, Israel and Chile have recently contacted Uruguay’s National Drug Board regarding the country’s new policies, reports local newspaper El Observador.

Canadian companies, expecting a spike in demand under new medical marijuana regulations, have expressed interest in purchasing cannabis from Uruguay directly.

But Uruguayuan officials have yet to set export policies and say the domestic market is their current priority.

Presidential aide Diego Canepa said foreign interest was unexpected, but acknowledged that Uruguay could become a hub in “a highly competitive area.”

Likewise, local firms are reportedly exploring the potential to manufacture cannabis-based pharmaceuticals, a market that has so far been dominated by a single company in the UK.

Under a bill that was signed into law Dec. 24 by President Jose Mujica, Uruguayan lawmakers have until April 9th to finalize regulations for the legal production and sale of marijuana.

The National Drug Board says it expects local sales to begin in September.

Source Leaf Science

Now Hiring: Colorado Company Will Pay You Just To Smoke Cannabis

(Photo: Open Vape/Facebook)

A vaporizer company out of Denver is looking to a hire a full-time cannabis specialist, whose primary task will be to test new products.

Earlier this month, Open Vape listed a job opening through its Facebook page for a “Cannabis Quality Control Specialist” who will “sample, evaluate and document details about our cannabis products.” According to the listing, salary will be determined based on “experience.”

While the job seems simple enough, Open Vape Vice President Todd Mitchem told The Daily Dot that the company is looking for a true expert on the subject.

Mitchem says that means someone who can, for example, tell the difference between an indica and a sativa based on smell alone, and someone who is familiar with all forms of cannabis, including flowers, concentrates, edibles and topicals.

The job also entails accurate, objective reporting of the user experience.

(Photo: CannabisEncyclopedia.com)

Open Vape makes vaporizer pens and cannabis oil cartridges that are sold in various dispensaries across Colorado. But with the kick-off of legal recreational marijuana sales, the company, like many others, is poised for expansion.

For instance, Medicine Man, a Denver-based dispensary that carries Open Vape products, is already seeing a boost in business from the recreational market. By this spring, the dispensary will undergo a $2.6 million expansion that will double its growing capacity and revamp its storefront, The Denver Post reports.

In addition to a standard resume, Open Vape is inviting applicants to submit a short video describing what qualifies them for the job. So far, the company has received over 1,000 submissions, which Mitchem says range widely from absurd to serious.

The deadline for those interested in becoming a legitimate Cannabis Quality Control Specialist is March 1.

Source Leaf Science

Legal Marijuana In Uruguay Lets Scientists Finally Study It

(Photo: Derek Gavey/Flickr)

Under a law passed in December that legalized marijuana, Uruguay is set to become a hub for research on all aspects of the plant.

Scientists at the University of the Republic, Uruguay’s largest and most renowned university, plan to research the benefits and harms of cannabis use once final regulations are released in April, local media reports.

The goal is to study everything surrounding marijuana consumption from all biological, chemical and medical aspects, says Nelson Bracesco, a professor at the Faculty of Medicine.

“We have a historic opportunity permitted by the law,” adds biologist Burix Mechoso.

Bracesco says decades of prohibition have resulted in few studies being conducted on the human level.

In the U.S., the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) is the only legal source of marijuana for researchers, and many report difficulty gaining access to it.

One of the first studies planned is how marijuana affects sleep. Uruguayan researchers hope to identify which ingredients in cannabis influence sleep quality, and their precise effects and applications, such as treating insomnia.

“There are uses and effects attributed to cannabis that interest us for analysis,” says sleep scientist Atilio Falconi.

Research on strains is also being planned. Geneticists hope to identify the different types of cannabis that exist in the country in order to create a national database.

“We have a historic opportunity permitted by the law”Bracesco says the research will contribute unbiased information to the debate surrounding marijuana, and will remain free of influence from political interests or the private sector.

So far, Bracesco’s team has not been in contact with foreign researchers. But the scientist believes international collaboration will inevitably occur once studies are underway.

Last week, July Calzada, Secretary of the country’s National Drug Board, confirmed that a regulatory system for recreational marijuana would be finalized by April.

However, he said rules for medical marijuana would be delayed for a few months because the subject is of “greater complexity.”

Source Leaf Science

How To Get A Job In The Marijuana Industry: Q&A With Tweed Inc.

(Photo: Tweed Inc.)

The growth of the cannabis industry is creating career opportunities that have never existed before. We asked one company about how to land one.

For Canadians, the switch to a commercial medical marijuana system that is predicted to generate billions means that companies are hiring fast.

One of those companies is Tweed Inc., a newly licensed producer based in Smith Falls, Ontario. The company expects to create over a 100 jobs once operations are in full swing.

We spoke to Chris Murray, Director of Medical Education and Outreach at Tweed, about what businesses are looking for when it comes to new hires.

Q: How much hiring has Tweed done so far? Are there any jobs still available?

Over the past few months, we’ve started to expand from our initial core team. I joined the Tweed team in December to focus on the medical education and practitioner communication side of things.

As we progressed towards being approved, we started moving forward with hiring. We’ve already hired a total of 9 people in various levels. We also have fantastic local construction workers and contractors that have been amazing with their commitment to building up Tweed.

But right now, we still have a couple more positions to hire in terms of production assistants, and a medical liaison to help with educating practitioners.

Q: What job opportunities are there at a company like Tweed?

For us, being one of the largest producers in Canada, there’s obviously a focus on the production side of things. We have our master grower, our section growers, and our production assistants. And as our capacity continues to grow, those roles will multiply.

Beyond production we have our customer care team, which mostly consists of customer support agents who communicate with patients through phone or email. Eventually there will be roles to help evaluate and improve the process of addressing patients’ needs.

The medical side is also an area with reasonable promise for growth. We have a medical liaison position open and we’ll likely have some sort of event management role, specifically involved with outreach to practitioners, whether it be through one-on-one academic detailing or communicating to practitioners through conferences and continuing medical education events.

There’s also our quality assurance team, who are responsible for laboratory analysis of products and concentrations of different cannabinoids based on Health Canada requirements.

Q: Are there any special qualifications for getting hired in this industry?

I don’t think so. Because where we stand as an industry, there isn’t really a place to draw from. Unless you’re to consider recreationally growing cannabis as a specific requirement.

But there’s not a lot of people who have experience growing medical cannabis in a commercial indoor facility. You do get relevant experience growing other products in a commercial indoor facility, like a greenhouse, so it helps to have that.

Tweed’s grow facility currently houses over 10,000 plants (Photo: Tweed Inc.)

On the medical side, I think the most important qualification is someone who has a proven track record of learning. Because when you look at something like marijuana, where the evidence is so broad-spectrum and continually changing, it’s important to be able to adapt. It’s also important to be able to communicate that information to practitioners.

Q: Why would someone want to work in the marijuana industry?

The reason I wanted to be involved with this opportunity is based on looking at cannabis as a whole – the amount of research and what it’s said to do, and has done, for so many people. Therapeutically, the things that it can do are exceptional.

My background has been in medical education, such as taking dense research and turning it into information that the general public reads, or what practitioners base what they do on.

So to be part of something that can change healthcare in an incredibly positive way is the appeal for me. I truly think, as this industry develops, that you will see a change in the landscape of how it’s prescribed and thought of by practitioners.

Q: Can employees use cannabis on the job?

There’s certain situations where it’s ill-advised. But then again we don’t have any roles involving heavy machinery. If someone is using it for medication and feels they need to use it while they’re working, I don’t think there would be any issues with that. But our official policy is to decide on a case-by-case basis.

Q: Are there any special perks of working at Tweed (i.e. discounts, stock options)?

I get asked a lot about whether I get discounts or free samples or need someone to test product. But as far as our operations are concerned, I don’t think we’ll be having any discounts.

We are looking at getting listed on the TSX, and there is an options pool that we’re in the process of developing. Our goal is to have people looking at working with Tweed as being a company they can grow with as well. So having that available for employees I think is important.

Source Leaf Science